When she stands between two worlds
by aperfectsong
Summary: Every time she steps into the well, there's one short moment after she's begun to leave her home and enter the Fedual Era where she feels like she's nowhere. [IYK shorts] The old tree and the older soul won 1st at iyficcontest and inuyashafanfic on lj.
1. When she stands between two worlds

_When She Stands Between Two Worlds_

Every time she steps into the well, there's one short moment after she's begun to leave her home and enter the Fedual Era where she feels like she's nowhere. She's had dreams about it, where she can't pass through or return and she's just _there_, trapped in nothing.

She doesn't tell him about it when she wakes up, her breathing rapid and irregular, even though she can feel his yellow eyes focusing on her, even though she can feel his worry as strongly as if it were her own; even though, on those nights, there's nothing she wants more than to be held tightly, to rub her face against the fabric covering his chest and just stay there until morning.

She doesn't look at him because it can't always up to _him_ to save her, to protect her. But she wants to.

When the warm yellow of his eyes refocuses on some other sound, Kagome wishes for a moment that he could be something else – human, maybe; but she takes the thought back immediately, regretfully. She just wishes that he couldn't sense the fear from the beating of her heart or the smell of cold sweat forming on her skin or the awkward way she curls into herself in the dark hut.

In the mornings, she always wakes up a little sore, her body still unaccustomed to the hard ground beneath her after what seems a lifetime of practice. She thinks maybe it's hard to undo sixteen years of sleeping atop a warm mattress with two pillows beneath her neck and one curled in front of her (to wrap her arms around). She can tell by the mocking tone of his voice that he doesn't really understand this, that maybe he'd only be able to understand after a failed night sleep atop something warm and soft. But she knows his were a just a way to test her – his means of determining if she's really suited for life in this way, or of telling her he knows she isn't. Or maybe they're his way of trying to make her choice easier.

She wonders briefly if he can smell her ambivalence.

But later, when they're leaving and he crouches down in front of her and helps her slip her legs around him, pulls her to him harder than usual. He splays his fingers across the underside of her thighs and holds her so tightly, she knows he knows. His fingertips pass the unspoken thought through her skin: don't leave me here without you.


	2. As he stared at her sleeping

_As he stared at her sleeping_

This was written for iyficcontest on lj - the prompt was chains.

* * *

They used to be like chains – heavy shackles that he had to drag around with him everywhere, a symbol of his unreliability, his untrustworthiness, of danger.

He was dangerous. He wanted them all to think he was dangerous. He wanted _her_ to think he was a monster, a demon, even – anything just to keep her at a distance.

But that was before he could tell her apart by her scent, by the soft shine of her hair, by the small breathing noises she made while she slept.

He couldn't even pinpoint the moment where it changed - it had come upon him gently. So gently even, that he didn't realize until it was already completely upon him – until he understood why his eyes would always focus on her. In his mind, he compared it to the way his mother would run her fingers through his hair until he fell asleep—it was so gentle that he used to have to concentrate on it to _feel_ it. But when he concentrated, he really _felt_ it and he _couldn't_ think of anything else.

As he watched the rise and fall of her chest, he fingered the rosary absentmindedly. They weren't like chains – not anymore. They were too light.


	3. The old tree and the older soul

"Kagome, how can you be so strong?"

"This isn't about being strong, baka!"

Takes place after 474: Wounded Heart

Won 1st at iyficcontest on lj for Sorrow and the 4th Anniversary Challenge "Endings" at inuyashafanfic on lj.

The old tree and the older soul

"Keh," Inuyasha said as Kagome rubbed at his face absently with a cloth from her backpack. "You don't have to do that, you know."

The motion of her hand slowed enough for him to realize that his words distracted her. After a brief pause – so brief, he couldn't say for sure if she had even known her hand stopped moving – she started rubbing again.

"I know," she said plainly, without a trace of the anger he felt chafing his face.

His ears flattened instantly, but she didn't seem to notice. When she finished, she pulled the rag through the clear stream water, leaving behind a light trail of red in its wake.

Inuyasha watched intently as the blood diffused into the water, leaving its slight scent as the only evidence they were even there. He wondered absentmindedly how long it would take that smell – his weakness, his fear – to completely fade.

"Coming, Inuyasha?" Kagome asked, with her backpack already strapped on. He knew their friends were waiting for them up ahead, so he bounded after her.

"Get on," he said, crouching a little. He stood like that for a moment, just waiting for the feel of her warmth to press against his back.

She hesitated, for a moment, not even touching him, so he turned to face her. "What is it?"

"I—I think I want to stretch my legs a bit," she lied – he could smell the cold sweat on her palms. But he just looked at her and nodded.

She hadn't forgiven him.

Her broken voice echoed among countless others in his mind: _Did you want to go?_

He didn't; he knew he didn't, but for some reason, saying it would have been another betrayal, like that somehow Kikyo would have heard him.

_She's dead_, he told himself. _It doesn't matter anymore._

He curled his hands into fists and felt the sharp prickle of his claws against his palms. He also felt the cold feeling, the one that reminded him of the two women who had already died in his arms, as it spread from beneath his fingertips. He let the tension go and dropped his arms to his sides.

"I don't want to go," he mumbled, knowing she was already too far away to have heard him.

-

Inuyasha walked next to the monk, trying his hardest to tear his eyes from the girl in front of him, from the way she stumbled over every bump in the road and nearly collapsed under the weight of her yellow backpack.

"Inuyasha, is something wrong with Kagome-sama?" the monk barely mouthed, knowing the hanyo would be able to hear him.

"Keh! If she doesn't want to admit she needs my help, it's her own damn fault," he managed, but even to his own ears, his words sounded more like unintelligible grumbling than anything else.

The monk just laughed at him.

He stared hard at the back of her head – _she couldn't still be mad? Could she?_ Before he even had time to blink, he was walking at her side.

"What are you mad at me for?" he asked before his common sense kicked in, wincing at the sound of his own voice. _She was mad because I gave in! She knows what I saw and why I couldn't fight it._

"I'm not mad, Inuyasha."

"Then why won't you let me help you?"

She paused, thinking maybe.

"I just need to do some things on my own," she said.

His nose picked up the familiar scent of salt and he realized where it was coming from: her eyes. But she didn't cry; she just smiled a little. She turned back to Sango and kept walking, leaving Inuyasha to stare at the back of her head, _again_.

The salty smell brought to his mind Kaou's words, and he felt a little like falling apart as he tried to figure out what the demon meant by them:

_That girl's soul is even more wounded than yours_.

-

That night, when they finished eating, she crawled into her sleeping bag and closed her eyes without even cleaning up after herself. Inuyasha heard the light snores coming from her slightly-opened mouth before campfire burnt itself out, while their friends were still discussing their plans for the next day.

As Shippo snuggled closer to her, Inuyasha couldn't help but notice the way she shivered in her sleep, so he placed his cloak over her body and stole away to the forest. His bare feet made a soft pattering sound as he sprinted past the flowering trees, allowing the scent of their new life to wash over him. Somewhere close, he recognized the familiar scent of already dead, dry wood, so he kept running

In a small clearing, he found the smell: an old tree with deep cuts from where human axes had tried to tear her down. He stared at her for a moment, his silence questioning. _Why is she so peaceful?_ he wondered. When he ran his hand along her wounds, he felt _something_ and thought for a moment that it was strength or power – _was this tree youkai once?_

_No_, it seemed to answer. His ears stood up, alert, and he pressed his whole hand against the tree's wounds.

"Hello?" he asked the tree. It didn't answer.

"_Fuck_," he grunted. _It's just a tree and it's already dead. What am I—_

But_ something_ pulsed beneath his palm that caused him to shrink back into his clothes, and he _knew_. Somehow he could just feel the way the humans tried to tear the limbs from her body to build houses and fires—but above all that pain, he could feel old tree's peace.

Something told him to take the dead wood, to build a fire for his companions, to use the fire's warmth to ease _her_ suffering. Inuyasha grumbled as he snapped the old branches and carried them back to the clearing, the rough texture of the bark scratching against his skin.

Kagome was suffering too, like he was. She had an old soul; he knew it belonged in part to Kikyo and Midoriko before her, and that it already held their suffering. But he didn't understand. The more he thought about it, the more he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something she hadn't told him.

After arranging the logs neatly on the fire, he blew on the still-red embers. The wood from the old tree caught instantly and raged to life, nearly singing his eyebrows off.

"Shit," he hissed, falling backwards with both of his hands over his eyes. It was then that he heard her laughing.

He looked up at her and forgot to breathe when he saw the way the fire was casting shadows around her face. He couldn't stop himself from smiling. Her eyes met his for a brief moment before he pulled his away, letting them rest on the crackling fire.

"Thanks, Inuyasha."

"What?" he mumbled before he looked up to see her pulling her hands through the too-long sleeves of his fire rat cloak. "Oh."

"And for the fire." She smiled.

"You were cold," he said simply, like an excuse. He _wasn't_ cold, but he still moved closer to the fire to try and add its warmth to his own and to stop the incessant need to rub his hands together.

"Inuyasha, are you alright?"

"I – yeah," he lied, forcing himself not to tell her that ever since Kikyo's soul had turned to warm light in his arms, he felt like the warm part of his own was missing.

"Here," she replied, moving over to him. "I know you're cold." She pulled the cloak off her own body and draped it over his and before he could think to protest, she sat down next to him in and pulled her sleeping bag across both of them.

Blushing, he asked harshly, "Where'd the runt go?"

"He must have gotten cold," she said, looking to where he lay cuddled against the neko-youkai's warm fur.

"Oh."

He stared at the fire, thinking about them—her.

He debated telling her about the old tree and how it stood completely dead and peaceful, despite its pain. He wanted to tell her that it gave him hope they would survive the journey, but couldn't without bringing up the idea of the one who had already fallen, the one he couldn't save.

Touching the spot on his left cheek where Kagome had scrubbed too hard at the dried blood, he remembered _her_.

"What did you see?" he asked suddenly, unable to keep the desperation out of his own voice.

"What?"

"After you saved me and you fell, what did you see?"

"What I saw?" she asked quietly, lowering her eyes.

He could tell she was thinking – planning out what she was going to tell him, maybe.

"You were trying to leave with Kikyo," she began slowly and took a shaky breath. "And you knew we wouldn't be able to survive without you…

"And that Miroku would have to leave Sango-chan when his wind-tunnel became too dangerous… and that I would have to go home and tell my mother that I couldn't leave Sango and Shippo all alone…"

Inuyasha moved closer to her, so much that their sides were touching. She felt warm.

"And I felt things that didn't belong to me. I felt Midoriko's… pain when she had to create the Shikon no Tama… and Kikyo… how she felt when she thought you betrayed her and when she knew she couldn't defeat Naraku.

"But I then I remembered that you didn't go with Kikyo, even if part of you wanted to. You stayed with us."

"I didn't want to go with her," he said, reaching under her sleeping bag to grab her hand.

"I know."

"And… I'm sorry…"

She looked like she was about to ask _for what_, but instead, she leaned against his side.

"I couldn't save her, Kagome. But I promise that I won't let you… I'll protect you, Kagome." He knew his face was probably red and that he had tears glistening in his eyes, but he looked at her anyway.

"And we'll destroy the jewel and Naraku, and no one else is going to die." _I won't let Kikyo's death be in vain. And I won't let you feel this way…_

Slowly, she wrapped her arms around him, so he pulled her into his lap.

"Thank you."

At her words, he embraced her tighter, and he felt warmth flowing beneath his skin again.

-

The next morning when they walked past the old tree, Inuyasha stopped at its base and crouched down so Kagome could slip off his back.

Something in him felt like he should say goodbye.

"Sugoi," Kagome murmured in awe.

"What is it, Kagome? Isn't it just a dead tree?"

"She was very old tree," the monk explained to the kitsune. "Very strong when she was alive, but it looks like she gave up the water beneath her roots to the smaller trees growing around her."

Inuyasha again stared up at the tree's endless branches and heard something that sounded like the voice of a woman he used to know.

"Because of her, they survived," Miroku said with a smile to the demon-exterminator.

But Inuyasha wasn't listening.

_Good luck_, the old tree seemed to tell him.


End file.
